


Fool's Wisdom (The Things We Don't Tell)

by Bimo



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Character Study, Friendship/Love, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 21:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10727733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bimo/pseuds/Bimo
Summary: When Jackson Healy is left alone to deal with an elderly client, quite a few things fall into place.





	Fool's Wisdom (The Things We Don't Tell)

**Author's Note:**

> **Thanks to:** The wonderful Ineptdetective (Gotyerback), for fantastic beta and encouragement :)
> 
>  **Author's Note:** I couldn't write hardboiled detective fic if my life depended on it, so I'm not even pretending to. Please make of this whatever you want and enjoy!

FOOL’S WISDOM (THE THINGS WE DON’T TELL)  
by Bimo

Cutting down on booze may or may not have been a conscious effort – hard to say with a guy like Holland March. But, whatever the reason, for the first few months of 1978, March seemed as if he was trying to make things alright. Of course, there had been the incident at the Grey River Sushi Bar (his condition wasn’t free of relapses) but for Jackson Healy it was stable enough to believe that his business partnership with March had an actual future. More satisfying than breaking kneecaps for sure. Also, the Nice Guys agency was running well at the moment.

Perhaps almost too well, Jackson thought, looking at the fancy flower vase filled with pink and white lilacs on the couch table in front of him. While he was waiting, some maid-nurse-personal-assistant... whatever... came in and served him a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a cucumber sandwich.

“Mister Steenhagen will be with you, shortly,” she said and disappeared back into the kitchen of Steenhagen’s Pacific Palisades condo.

Jackson took a bite, chewed and let his eyes wander. Surrounded by what seemed to him like valuable 1920s furniture, he found that even such a plain, ordinary thing as a cucumber sandwich tasted strangely refined. He could not have felt more out of place, if had there been any mirrors in which to catch his own reflection.

Kids these days would likely explain his presence in the home of such a moneyed but decidedly non-criminal client as Steenhagen with Karma, he reckoned. They’d say it was some bizarre form of cosmic recompense for everything March and he had gone through when battling mighty Detroit. But tell that to the pretty girl in the yellow dress, Jackson thought. Or to Misty, Dean, and Sid Shattuck.

If you looked at the agency’s recent string of successes from a certain perspective, matters were far more straight-forward. A reduced number of daytime trips to bars and liquor stores meant a more clear-headed, more predictable March, who kept his own private frame of mind halfway in check. No big surprise, really, that the elderly ladies who made up two thirds of their client base responded to that and, once in a while, even recommended the agency to friends and acquaintances. They all seemed like old fogey birds of a feather – seen one, seen them all. Similar situations, similar problems and similar loneliness, and on a good day March knew how to make them feel special.

The secret probably lay in the more lenient, more patient way that he listened to all their stories, Jackson suspected, thinking about the weird pep talk that March had given him, his hair wet from rain, during a particular pointless stakeout a few weeks ago, at Evergreen Cemetery.

“They aren’t nuts, they’re just old. So, of course their idea of what’s real or important is different. Come on, Jackson, just three more hours and Mrs. McCloskey will be happy to have evidence that no one, _really_ no one, showed up at that grave.”

Jackson couldn’t have cared less, but, realising what type of contacts good old arthritic Mrs. McCloskey possessed from her decades-long work as a production assistant at MGM, he had clung to March’s advice ever since. Hang on just three more hours, just a few more minutes. Who cared how much time you spent waiting, as long as your sandwich was nice and your orange juice freshly squeezed, with tiny, little ice cubes bobbing up and down every time you took a sip.

“I’m sorry it took me so long, Mr. Healy,” Steenhagen said when he finally came out of his study, looking even more haggard than the last time Jackson had seen him. “But I just had Doris Day on the phone. Really funny who remembers you wrote a couple of tunes for them, once word gets around that you’re dying. And we can’t be rude to a lady like Doris Day, can we?”

“No, certainly, not,” Jackson replied in all earnestness. Steenhagen’s chuckle turned into a cough, very dry, very brittle.

“Sir do you need help? A glass of water?”

Steenhagen shook his head. Still coughing, he slowly lowered himself into an armchair. His stubbornly determined gestures made it perfectly clear that he did not want any assistance, so Jackson fought down the instinct to leap up and offer support, no matter how much he internally cringed at the sight of the man struggling.

The coughing and wheezing ceased. After Steenhagen had regained his breath, he attempted to smile.

“See, Healy, I’m still alive. I assume these are my pictures?” he asked, pointing towards the large brown, envelope that Jackson had placed at the far end of the table for reasons of safety. Even though March wasn’t around, Jackson had made it a habit to never, ever leave the results of their work in a place where they could get into contact with all sorts of liquids from knocked over glasses or cups. There were the orange juice and the lilac vase to consider.

“Yes, your pictures, Sir. And also brief resumes. It isn’t much, though. Just some information on what your former lyricist’s grandchildren are doing at the moment and what they’re like.”

“Ah, excellent, thank you.”

“Brother and sister both seem very nice,” Jackson continued.

He noticed how Steenhagen’s face with its far-too-tight skin, prominent cheekbones and oddly sharp nose seemed less hollow and alive with emotion for few moments, and felt a sudden rush of warmth towards March’s daughter Holly, whose idea it had been in the first place to put in a little extra work into – what did she call it... ah, yes, “Dad’s _Willy Wonka_ case”. Only that this time there wasn’t a chocolate factory to inherit, but instead the copyrights to over one hundred songs, at least a good dozen of them remarkably popular tunes like the sentimental little waltz the radio stations always played around Christmas and which Jackson couldn’t stand hearing anymore, because that damned song had been playing the night he had proposed to his ex.

“Very well, then. I guess, I’ll have a look at everything later, when I’m more rested,” Steenhagen said, and, while Jackson knew better than to interfere with a client’s wishes, he felt that he’d be damned if he didn’t try to appeal to the man’s common sense one final time.

“Sir, are you sure you don’t want to contact the family while you still can? I mean, once those kids turn twenty-one, each of them is gonna inherit a fortune. Maybe they’d like, or maybe you’d like–”

“Absolutely sure,” Steenhagen nipped the idea in the bud. “Trust me, I wouldn’t have relied on your and Mr. March’s services if matters were different.”

For a few moments they looked at each other, each of them knowing that Jackson had touched upon something wrapped in a thousand regrets, something that he should have let lie. Sighing, Steenhagen tore a fountain pen and a checkbook from the pocket of his cardigan, then placed both on the table. “Oh, don’t feel too sorry for me, Mr. Healy, because there is really no need to,” he said. “But let’s get to the more pleasant part of this transaction. More pleasant for you, anyway. What sum did we agree on? Six hundred per day, plus expenses for the trip to... Oakland, wasn’t it?”

Jackson nodded and handed over their bill, plus receipts for gas, hotel and the restaurant meals they had eaten. Minus advance, Steenhagen owed them a little over two thousand three hundred dollars, quite a nice sum for a job during which the biggest difficulty had lain in getting halfway decent shots of the two kids from a safe distance. The boy, a huge _Star Wars_ fan, was slightly younger than Holly. The girl, Christine, two years older and already worrying about college. Judging by the hell she and a bunch of fellow schoolmates had raised about some cafeteria issue, she apparently was a future civil rights protester in the making. And thanks to March’s daughter, an old man now could now read up on all that stuff later and as often as he wanted to, Jackson thought.

He still remembered the afternoon March had asked a protesting Holly if she could spend a couple of nights at Jessica’s or Sadie’s.

“Dad, if you hadn’t explained why you and Mr. Healy are taking these pictures, I’d find this Oakland job super creepy,” Holly had told her father in no uncertain terms, leaning across the provisorily fixed kitchen counter of March’s battered rental.

“Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too. That’s why I keep telling you these things. And please don’t say _super_ creepy, say _exceedingly_ , or at least _very_.”

If father-daughter exchanges like these didn’t stick to your mind, what on Earth did? Jackson only wished that one of these days Holly would stop calling him Mr. Healy. It would be about time, he reckoned, watching Steenhagen browse through the bundle of stapled receipts.

“Looks all fine and acceptable to me,” Steenhagen said. “One last question, though, before you’re getting your check. Please forgive me my curiosity, but since you came here on your own, I just would like to ask. The lovely Mr. March isn’t _unwell_ or anything?”

“Pardon?” Jackson replied, more hung up on the _lovely_ than on Steenhagen’s somewhat emphasised pronunciation of _unwell_. After all, the man had a whole lifetime of surviving the entertainment industry under his belt, there was little doubt someone as smart and observant as he would have seen through March’s current act of sailing through day after day with just enough alcohol in his bloodstream to stay afloat. Did March have a system, a chart? Or did he just do this by instinct?

 “Oh, Mr. Healy, you understood perfectly well.”

Steenhagen gazed directly at Jackson now, his eyes bright and flickering with something strange that Jackson knew he would find hard to forget. There was a moment of relief when Steenhagen turned away and looked towards the high, three-panelled window, only to continue with a tone of voice that sounded mildly condescending, yet at the same time quite soft and gentle.

“It’s just that I would have liked to say goodbye to him. You know, when I was young, back in Berlin, I found few sights so pleasing as that of a handsome blonde lighting a cigarette. And your Mr. March is very pretty and has very fine, slender hands. But they aren’t exactly the steadiest I have ever seen.”

Fuck, Jackson thought. He would almost have spoken the word aloud, but just in time considered the fact that March and he had yet to get paid. So he only blinked and began counting to ten in his mind. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight-

“I hope, I haven’t shocked you too much, but during the last few weeks I’ve kind of lost any taste for pretence,” Steenhagen said.

“Sir, it’s okay.”

In his life before Holland March very few things had ever prepared Jackson for handling such conversations, so he firmly held on to that part of truth which seemed the most solid, the most simple. “It’s just that March’s currently rebuilding his house. Some stuff with the construction company came up, so he had to stay on the scene.”

“Rebuilding his house? If that’s truly so, just tell Mr. March I wish him the best of luck. He looks like a man who will need it.”

Jackson nodded and watched Steenhagen pick up checkbook and pen. Frail, old fingers covered with liver spots, sliding across paper. When he finally held the check in his hands, Jackson first thought Steenhagen had not been able to write the figures more clearly, but the amount in words was the same, twelve grand instead of two, just like this, on a whim.

“You don’t have to say anything, Healy. Please excuse me but I feel a bit tired now. So good day, and take care.”

“Good day, Sir,” Jackson replied, so stunned he did not manage a thank you. Very carefully he folded the check, by now the only fixed point in the room, and put it into his wallet. His dizziness only ebbed once he made it back to his car and clenched the steering wheel with both hands. Still in his trunk were the new fish tank filter and the cleaning equipment he had bought earlier at his favourite pet store. The fish, though, could wait one more day, he decided, since filters were nearly always tricky business and you needed to be calm and at ease when you were messing with them.

Eventually he turned the ignition key, and after a couple of blocks, roads and traffic signs, found himself driving past the billboards of Santa Monica Boulevard, and then up into the hills again, into the direction of March’s building site. The construction company’s truck was leaving just as Jackson got out of the car, but March was still present, leaning against a concrete mixer and looking like he had spent the whole day out in the open, weary and slightly sunburned, his shirt half unbuttoned. Even from a distance Jackson could spot the wedding band dangling from the chain around March’s neck against the white undershirt.

“How did it go?” Jackson shouted across the lawn.

“Well, come closer and see for yourself,” March shouted back and pointed towards the newly erected construction of massive wooden beams.

“Really starts to look like a house.”

“Yeah, doesn’t it.”

Once Jackson stood by March’s side, he admired the perfection of the load-bearing walls, every bolt, every angle, the smell of freshly sawed wood. What madness are we doing to ourselves, he wondered.

The moment felt weird, like some sort of tilting point at which March’s exhausted euphoria could easily shift into something unsure and frightened, because of what this building site represented. All the failure, death, pain, and loss of the burnt-down house March once had lived in blended together with every single hope and fear that he probably held for the new. One day Holly would leave and head off to college.

Jackson could see March pursing his lips and wiping his increasingly watery eyes with the back of his hand now.

“Damn sawdust, eh?”

“Yeah, damn sawdust,” March answered, and the thin layer of casualness in his voice made it obvious to Jackson that no matter how much he longed for it, telling the news about Steenhagen’s check right now would only feel cheap and utterly pointless. So instead he just stepped closer, opened his arms and embraced.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Unlike Doris Day, Steenhagen is of course entirely fictional.


End file.
